It seems the Vatican has weighed in this week on Sex Education in public schools. Archbishop Timothy Dolan has opposed New York’s new program sex education program. An editorial in the Vatican’s official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano points to the approach taken in Italy, which does not teach mandatory sex education to children. The editorial points out that in Britain, despite such programs, children continue to have sex and pregnancies cases are growing. However, in Italy, such is not the case, as despite the absence of sex education, pregnancy rates are low. The editorial points out that there should be more emphasis on the breakdown of the family and less emphasis on creating a sexual utopia. The article questions why “public institutions in the West continue to have such magical trust in the effectiveness of sex education.” The editorial draws its own conclusions about why the statistics in Italy are different: “[t]his is thanks to the family, to the loving vigilance of parents over their children, to the fact that kids are not left to themselves with a box of contraceptives as the only defense against their passions and mistakes.”